Setup Considerations: Cash Forecasting with Worksheets
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of cash forecasting with Worksheets. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
You can set up cash forecasting with Worksheets to create cash forecasts for viewing in cash forecast reports and dashboards. You can use Worksheets to model what-if scenarios in a spreadsheet format using your operational transactions, bank statement transactions, and external cash activities. Cash forecast reports provide visibility into your future cash activities for making accurate projections and decisions on funding and investing needs.
Business Benefits
Cash forecasting with Worksheets enables you to:
- Collaborate with other users to model cash forecasts more efficiently and streamline the process.
- Link supplier invoices, customer invoices, expenses, payroll, or other custom payment reports to automatically populate forecasted data and reduce manual data entry on model workbooks.
- Compare and analyze your forecasts versus actuals to increase accuracy for projecting future cash flows.
- Schedule and automate the cash forecast generation process on regular intervals to produce predictable and reliable cash forecasts.
Use Cases
You can use cash forecasting with Worksheets to:
- Define a cash forecasting structure to prepare projected cash inflows, outflows, and balances for current and future cash positions.
- Schedule Workday to automatically generate a rolling, 12-month cash forecast every month to determine the liquidity requirements for supporting strategic company initiatives.
- Output your cash forecasts to reports or a Cash Management dashboard to track liquidity, identify future cash shortfalls, and make funding and investing decisions.
Questions to Consider
Question | Considerations |
|---|---|
Can you replicate an existing non-Workday cash forecast outline structure to use for cash forecasting with Worksheets? | You can replicate your cash forecast structure that exists outside of Workday exactly as it appears in production.
You can also use your existing spend categories or revenue categories to define forecasted cash activities such as rent, interest, or domestic and international payments. |
Why is it important to construct a hierarchical outline structure with multiple levels? | A hierarchical cash forecast outline with multiple levels enables you to:
|
How can you use non-Workday data sources for modeling your cash forecast data? | You can record external cash activities using the Create External Cash Activity task, or the Import External Cash Activities web service.
You can also upload ad hoc data from local storage into Worksheets. Workday then converts the data into a model worksheet that you can merge with your cash forecast worksheet. |
How can you collaborate with other users to prepare forecasted data related to payroll, tax, and other secured cash activities? | The owner of the worksheet can assign view, edit, and comment permissions in Worksheets. |
How can you keep your in-progress cash forecasts current with the latest updates in Workday? | You can link Workday source data as live data in Worksheets and schedule automatic refreshes to keep cash forecast changes up to date. |
Recommendations
- Because you can only assign 1 time span profile to an outline, we recommend that you define multiple cash forecast outlines for specific usages. Example: A monthly forecast at a high level and a daily forecast at a more detailed level.
- If you use a company hierarchy in the outline, the cash forecast displays amounts and balances separately for each company. It’s a good practice to keep the companies that you want to compare in 1 workbook, since the cash forecast displays the companies side by side. You can generate other workbooks for the companies that you’re not comparing.
Requirements
To display your published cash forecast in the standard reports, map your outline to Workday aliases using the
Map Standard Aliases
task. Select Cash Forecast Outline Row
on the Business Object
prompt.Example: Map these standard aliases to the associated rows in your outline structure:
Standard Alias | Mapped Tenanted Value |
|---|---|
_FC_Outline_Top_Level
| Daily Cash Forecast
|
_FC_Opening Balance
| Opening Balance
|
_FC_Inflows
| Cash Inflows
|
_FC_Outflows
| Cash Outflows
|
Limitations
You can only map the Workday standard aliases to a single cash forecast outline. If you're using more than 1 outline for cash forecasting, you can copy the standard reports as custom reports to link to the other outlines. We recommend that you contact Workday Professional Services or a Workday Consulting partner for assistance.
Tenant Setup
No impact.
Security
Domain | Considerations |
|---|---|
Worksheets in the System functional area | Users secured to this domain can create, upload, edit, share, and collaborate on workbooks. |
Drive in the System functional area | Provides access to Workday Drive for storing workbooks and other file types, such as CSV files, for use in Worksheets. |
Set Up: Cash Forecasting in the Cash Management functional area | Provides access to all cash forecast outline functionality. |
Process: Cash Forecast Reporting in the Cash Management functional area | Provides access to all cash forecast generation functionality. Users can also maintain cash activity categories and external cash activities. |
Process: Cash Forecast Data Automation in the Cash Management functional area | Provides access to cash forecast data sources and reports to use for automated data accumulation in Worksheets. |
Reports: Cash Forecast Reporting in the Cash Management functional area | Users secured to this domain can view published cash forecasts and standard reports. |
Aliases in the System functional area | Users secured to this domain can use the Map Standard Aliases task to map cash forecast outline rows to Workday aliases for reporting purposes. |
Business Processes
Business Process | Considerations |
|---|---|
Cash Forecast Event 2.0
| Publishing the cash forecast launches this business process to send the completed cash forecast for notification and approval. When you add a review step in the business process definition, reviewers can update the report during review and approval.
All reviewers must have security access to the Process: Cash Forecast Reporting domain. |
Cash Forecast Intercompany Event 2.0
| Configure this business process if you use intercompanies in your organization. Reviewers from each company must approve the cash forecast for the publishing process to complete. |
Reporting
Report or Dashboard | Considerations |
|---|---|
Cash Forecast by Reporting Currency report | Displays your forecasted cash activities and published cash forecast workbook using the specified reporting currency. |
Cash Forecast by Transaction Currency report | Displays your forecasted cash activities and published cash forecast workbook using the transaction currency. |
Cash Forecast to Actuals in Reporting Currency report | Displays your forecasted cash activities, actual cash positions, and their variances based on the cash forecast outline. Variances in the forecasts and actuals can indicate shortfalls or surplus funds.
Upload or manually enter prior day and intraday bank statements to display the actuals. |
Cash Management dashboard | You can create custom worklets to display on this dashboard using the Cash Forecast Cells 2.0 report data source. |
We suggest using these report data sources to build custom reports with cash forecasts:
- Cash Forecasts 2.0
- Cash Forecast Cells 2.0
- External Cash Activity Group
Integrations
You can use the
Import External Cash Activities
web service to import cash activities from third-party systems into Workday. You can then build a custom report using the External Cash Activity Group
report data source and business object, and link the report to your model worksheet to prepopulate your cash forecasts with the cash activities.Connections and Touchpoints
You can link custom reports with these cash activities from outside cash management to your model worksheet:
- Customer invoices
- Expense reports
- External cash activities
- Payroll payments
- Supplier invoices
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.